Hair Care Recipes
from Medieval/Renaissance Sources

There are many surviving recipes focused on hair
care in the Middle Ages. These recipes range from:

Encouraging hair
growth, thickness

Make hair curly

Hair color (from
bleaching to black)

Conditioners

Fragrance

To get rid of
“itch-mites”

Good sources for hair
care “products” can be found from Plat's Delightes for Ladies, the Trotula (12
th c), Porta's Natural Magic, the Manual de Mugeres (16 th c), and Gervase Markham's
English Housewife.

Long hair wasn't washed as often in period, and
the tendency to tangle probably accounts for the period tendency to keep it
in braids and other elaborate arrangements.

A word of CAUTION: many of the ingredients mentioned
here are not safe for modern use. Alum was used as a hair-dye mordant and should
be used with care even on hair-switches. The selection of hair dyes included
here is only a small sample. And it seems that hair dye recipes are the most
common category on hair care in surviving recipes.

Encouraging Hair Growth

So that hair might
grow wherever you wish. Take barley bread
with the crust, and grind it with salt and bear fat. But first burn the barley
bread. With this mixture anoint the place and the hair will grow. ( Trotula
)

In order to make the hair thick.
Take agrimony and elm bark, root of vervain , root of willow, southernwood,
burnt and pulverised linseed, [and] root of reed. Cook all these things with
goat milk or water, and wash the area (having first shaved it). Let cabbage
stalks and roots be pulverized and let pulverized shavings of boxwood or ivory
be mixed with them, and it should be pure yellow. And from these powders let
there be made a cleanser which makes the hair golden . ( Trotula )

To make hair to grow:Take leaves of willow and boil them
well in oil, and therewith anoint the place
where you would have any hair to grow, whether upon head or beard. ( Markham
)

Another:Take treacle water and honey, boil
them together, and wet a cloth therein,and
lay it where you would have hair to grow,
and it will come speedily. ( Markham )

Unction to grow and perfume the hairWhoever
desires to have their hair grow a lot and to make the head smell very good,
should get used to combing the hair, with vulture grease, in the sun. ( de Mugeres
)

Bruise Marsh-Mallow roots with Hog Grease,
and let them boil long in Wine.
T hen add Cumin seed well Bruised,
Mastick , and Yolks of Eggs, well boiled.First,
mingle them a little, and then boil them. Strain all through a Linen clout,
and let it stand and settle, then take the fat that swims on the top and anoint
the head, first wash. But to make them grow quickly, take Barley bread with
Salt, and Bear's Grease. Burn the Bread, and with such a mixture anoint the
place. Some smear a Glazed pot with the fat of a Horse's neck, and they boil
river Eel that is fat, and cut into pieces in it, till it Dissolve into Oil,
and they anoint the part with it ( Porta )

Curly hair

For making the
hair curly. Grind root of danewort with
oil and anoint the head, and tie it on the head with leaves. ( Trotula )

Hair Color

Blonde or Bleaching

For coloring the hair so that it is golden.
Take the exterior shell of a walnut and the bark of the tree itself, and cook
them in water, and with this water mix alum and oak apples, and with these mixed
things you will smear the head (having first washed it) placing upon the hair
leaves and tying them with strings for two days; you will be able to color [the
hair]. And comb the head so that whatever adheres to the hair as excess comes
off. Then place a coloring which is made from oriental crocus, dragon's blood,
and henna (whose larger part has been mixed with a decoction of brazilwood )
and thus let the woman remain for three days, and on the fourth day let her
be washed with hot water, and never will [this coloring
] be removed easily. ( Trotula )

Likewise, cook down dregs of white wine with
honey to the consistency of a cerotum and anoint the hair, if you wish it to
be golden. ( Trotula )

36. To
make haire of a faire yellow or golden colour .
The last water that is drawn from honey beeing of a deep redde colour, performeth
the same excellently; but the same hath a strong smell, and therefore must be
sweetened with some aromatical bodie . (Plat)

Or
else the haire being first clean washed, and then moistened a pretty while
by a good fire in warm Allome water with a sponge, you may moisten the same
in a decoction of Tumerick , Rubarb , or the Bark of the Barberry Tree; and
so it will recieue a most faire and beautiful colour (Plat).

"Take the dried dregs of white wine and
chop them into olive oil. Comb this
through your hair while sitting in the sun".

Brown Dyes

37. How to colour the head or beard into a
Chestnut colour in half an houre.Take
one part of Lead calcined with Sulphur , and one part of quicklime; temper them
somewhat thin with water: lay it vpon the hair, chafing it well in, and let
it dry one quarter of an hour or thereabout: then wash the same off with fair
water diuers times: and lastly with sope and water, and it will be a very natural
hair- colour . The longer it lyeth vpon the haire , the browner it groweth .
This coloureth not the flesh at all, and yet itlastest very long in the hair,
Soepius expertum . (Plat)

Black Dyes

If the woman wishes to have long and black
hair, take a green lizard and, having removed its head and tail , cook it in
common oil. Anoint the head with this oil. It makes the hair long and black.
( Trotula )

A proven Saracen
preparation. Take the rind of an extremely
sweet pomegranate and grind it, and let it boil in vinegar or water, and strain
it, and to this strained substance let there be added powder of oak apples and
alum in a large quantity, so that it might be thick as a poultice. Wrap the
hair with this , as though it were a kind of dough. Afterward, let bran be mixed
with oil and let it be placed in any kind of vessel upon the fire until the
bran is completely ignited. Let her sprinkle this on the head down to the roots.
Then she should wet it thoroughly and again let
her wrap her head (prepared this in the
above-mentioned little sack) in the same above-mentioned strained liquid, and
let her leave it throughout the night so that she might be the better anointed.
Afterward, let her hair be washed and it will be completely black. ( Trotula
)

For blackening
the hair. First the hair is prepared in
the above-mentioned manner so that it will be ready for coloring. Then let oak
apples be placed with oil in a dish and let them be burned. Then let them be
pulverized and placed in vinegar in which there has been placed blacking made
in Gaul, and let them be mixed. ( Trotula )

Likewise for the
same. Mix powder of galangal with juice
of a walnut and make it boil and anoint [the hair]. ( Trotula )

30. To colour a black hair presently into a
Chestnut- colourThis is done with oile of Vitriol;
but you must do it very carefully not tounching the skin. (Plat)

Conditioners

If, needed, you wish to have hair soft and
smooth and fine, wash it often with hot water in which there is powder of natron
[Native hydrous sodium carbonate] and vetch. ( Trotula )

Unction for combing hairTwo pounds of very fat and very
well-blended bacon cut into small pieces.And put it in a stew-pot, put with
it a fourth part of head lye and four maravedís of alhovas , and a fourth
of linseed, and a fourth of barberry, and a (fourth) of calamus gum, and another
(fourth) of bastard saffron (safflower), and another (fourth) of rough cumin.
Put the stew-pot on the fire with all these things, and once the bacon comes
apart, strain it with another large stew-pot and throw in three or four lizards.
And put the lid on the stew-pot very well. Cook it in the oven and, when cooked,
strain it and keep it in a bottle. And comb your hair with it. ( de Mugeres
)

Unction
to comb the headPut in a stew-pot the oil of a live
lizard, and the recently moulted skin of a snake and three cut lemons. And set
afloat the stew-pot very well, and put it to the fire and boil until the lizard
has burned. And when it has burned, strain that oil in a flask and comb your
hair with it. ( de Mugeres )

The use of lizard
comes up in the Manual a number of times. I think it may be a result of the
Moorish influence.

After leaving the bath, let her adorn her hair,
and first of all let her wash it with a cleanser such as this. Take ashes of
burnt vine, the chaff of barley nodes, and licorice wood (so that it may the
more brightly shite ) and sowbread; boil the chaff and the sowbread in water.
With the cahff and the ash and the sowbread, let a pot having at its base two
or three small openings be filled. Let the water in which the sowbread and the
chaff were previously cooked be poured into the pot, so that it is strained
by the small openings. With this cleanser let the woman wash her head. After
the washing, let her leave it to dry by itself, and her hair will be golden
and shimmering. ( Tortula )

Fragrance

But when she combs her hair, let her have this
powder. Take some dried roses, clove, nutmeg, watercress and galangal. Let all
these, powdered, be mixed with rose water. With this water let her sprinkle
her hair and comb it with a comb dipped in this same water so that [her hair]
will smell better. And let her make furrows in her hair and sprinkle on the
above-mentioned powder, and it will smell marvelously. ( Trotula )

Also, noblewomen should wear musk in their
hair, or clove, or both, but take care that it not be seen by anyone. Also the
veil with which the head is tied should be put on with cloves and musk, nutmeg
and other sweet-smelling substances. ( Trotula )

Itch-mites

For itch-mites
eating away at the hair. Take myrtleberry
, broom, [and] clary , and cook them in vinegar until the vinegar has been consumed,
and with this rub the ends of the hair vigorously. This same thing removes fissures
of the head if the head is washed well with it. ( Trotula )

Likewise, pulverize bitter lupins and you should
boil them in vinegar, and then rub the hair between the hands. This expels itch-mites
and kills them. ( Trotula )

Markham, Gervase. The English
Housewife: containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a
complete woman..., first printed 1615. Published 1986 by McGill-Queen's
University Press, Montreal; edited by Michael R. Best